Probably the single most fast-paced sector within the computer industry is the graphics cards market, especially where high-end products are concerned. It was only just last fall that ATi was able to catch up with NVIDIA's GeForce3 Ti series thanks to its new RADEON 8500 line, even besting it in some cases. ATi didn't get to enjoy this situation for very long, though. Upon its introduction in the first quarter of this year, the GeForce4 Ti was able to retake the speed crown for NVIDIA, uncontested. The only card a GeForce4 Ti needs fear is the home-made competition.

At this point it's time for the obligatory warning about the GeForce4 MX version, which, aside from the name and the misleading "4", has nothing in common with the Ti boards. From a technical viewpoint, these cards are still built on pre-GeForce3 technology, and it shows in their performance. They lack both pixel and vertex shaders. All in all, it's fair to say that the GeForce4 MX is nothing more than a modernized GeForce 2 chip with a new memory interface, hardware support for anti aliasing, and a second RAMDAC.

We already had a chance to test three early GeForce4 Ti boards a few weeks ago. If you'd like to see how your own card stacks up against the newer cards, feel free to have a look at our VGA charts .

You can read up on the GeForce4, its 3D features, and the changes from the GeForce3 in one of our earlier articles, found here .